Hypocrisy and moral failure in Christianity (specifically Gospel music):

I just came across a critique of a Gospel singer's song and in due course found out about a serious moral failure the singer had. Reading commentary on how and why this occurred led me to respond to reply from a minister in this way. As a Christian musician I really appreciate your post. The question of musical style and lifestyle are very important. I believe that the Church and Christian artists need to be very careful about how we live and who we associate with. I also KNOW that everything the Lord means for good Satan makes every attempt to defile and we as flawed humans often take the bait. Many colleagues and friends and others I know or know of came to the Lord because they were hired by churches. They may never have come to the Lord otherwise.

And of course, Satan also sends infiltrators and people make bad judgement calls. Our world is fallen and it's always going to be messy, sadly! Right now I believe Gospel music in particular is the most creative and innovative right now. The rich harmonic and rhythmic palette of Gospel is very related to jazz and R&B. And again Satan will always try to exploit the sensual feelings that a certain grooves and harmonies can evoke. It's up to us as believers to let God empower us to not cross the lines in every arena of life. Knowing that the enemy will always be roaming like a lion to destroy. We must do our best not to put ourselves in position to fall. AND We must have grace and mercy towards ourselves and each other when we fall. AND we must not settle for being second rate musically to avoid seconding worldly. My motto is everything is balance. It is the most difficult and most important thing to achieve. I pray I have it in my life. And I often fail. But I will try to make the absolute most of whatever talent God has put in me. And that will always include trying to be creative and trying to sound at least as good and current as secular music.

Again I think Gospel right now is the most musically diverse and interesting genre right now because of it's embrace of most styles of music and incorporating them with the message of Jesus Christ. (Mind you if you know me you know I love to rock too! The perfect song to would be montuno-funk-rock with Fred Hammond, Israel and Take 6 style vocals. But that's just me.)

But to sum up the issue of the title Hypocrisy and Moral Failure. You can't have a moral failure if you don't have morals. You can't be considered a hypocrite if you don't have an ideal. Moral failure is not necessarily hypocrisy. It's absolutely wrong but it's not NECESSARILY HYPOCRISY. If King David would have said to the prophet Nathan that the rich man who took the the poor man's lamb should be punished and then said he himself should not be when Nathan revealed that the rich man represent King David, THAT would have been hypocrisy. (To go on top of his adultery and arranging the husbands murder on the battlefield.) But he admitted that he had been utterly sinful and he repented. HYPOCRISY would have been to say "That doesn't apply to me."

What he he did was horrible but it was not hypocrisy. It was the failure to live up to the ideal. God bless (even and especially those who don't believe in Him or know whether or not He exists) and may we all live up to our ideals. Believer and non-believers. And when we fail as we all will. Let us deal with each other with honesty about our failings and with grace and mercy without judgement yet somehow without excusing it and saying that wrong is right. Balance is HARD, HARD WORK! I love you all! Talk amongst yourselves but please, I beg you, keep it civil. :-)